True Love irremovable by Death.
Serpilla. Phillis.
Serpilla. Thyrsis believes thee dead, and justly may
Within his youthful breast then entertain
New flames of love, and yet therein be free
From the least show of doing injury
To that rich beauty which he thinks extinct,
And happily hath mourn’d for long ago:
But when he shall perceive thee here alive,
His old lost love will then with thee revive.
Phillis. That love, Serpilla, which can be removed
With the light breath of an imagined death,
Is but a faint weak love; nor care I much
Whether it live within, or still lie dead.
Ev’n I myself believ’d him long ago
Dead, and enclosed within an earthen urn;
And yet, abhorring any other love,
I only loved that pale-faced beauty still;
And those dry bones, dissolved into dust:
And underneath their ashes kept alive
The lively flames of my still-burning fire.
Celia, being put to sleep by an ineffectual poison, waking believes herself to be among the dead. The old Shepherd Narete finds her, and re-assures her of her still being alive.
Shepherd. Celia, thou talkest idly; call again
Thy wandering senses; thou art yet alive.
And, if thou wilt not credit what I say,
Look up, and see the heavens turning round;
The sun descending down into the west,
Which not long since thou saw’st rise in the east:
Observe, that with the motion of the air
These fading leaves do fall:—
In the infernal region of the deep
The sun doth never rise, nor ever set;
Nor doth a falling leaf there e’er adorn
Those black eternal plants.
Thou still art on the earth ’mongst mortal men,
And still thou livest. I am Narete. These
Are the sweet fields of Scyros. Know’st thou not
The meadow where the fountain springs? this wood?
Enro’s great mountain, and Ormino’s hill;
The hill where thou wert born?
Thyrsis, upbraided by Phillis for loving another, while he supposed her dead, replies—
Thirsis. O do not turn thy face another way.
Perhaps thou thinkest, by denying thus
That lovely visage to these eyes of mine,
To punish my misdeeds; but think not so.
Look on me still, and mark me what I say,
(For, if thou know’st it not, I’ll tell thee then),
A more severe revenger of thy wrongs
Thou canst not have than those fair eyes of thine,
Which by those shining beams that wound my heart
Punish me more than all the world can do.
What greater pain canst thou inflict on me,
Than still to keep as fire before my face
That lovely beauty, which I have betray’d;
That beauty, I have lost?
Night breaks off her speech.[234]
Night.—But stay! for there methinks I see the Sun,
Eternal Painter, now begin to rise,
And limn the heavens in vermilion dye;
And having dipt his pencil, aptly framed,
Already in the colour of the morn,
With various temper he doth mix in one
Darkness and Light: and drawing curiously
Strait golden lines quite thro’ the dusky sky,
A rough draught of the day he seems to yield,
With red and tawny in an azure field.—
Already, by the clattering of their bits,
Their gingling harness, and their neighing sounds.
I hear Eous and fierce Pirous
Come panting on my back; and therefore I
Must fly away. And yet I do not fly,
But follow on my regulated course,
And those eternal Orders I received
From the First Mover of the Universe.
C. L.